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The late great Virgil Abloh executive produced a documentary about Sha’Carri Richardson’s story shortly before his untimely passing. Now, the 24-minute piece titled Sub Eleven Seconds will officially make its debut at the Sundance Film Festival this week.
According to Paper Magazine, Virgil produced the project alongside the documentary’s director Bafic, under his newly formed film production company ARCHITECTURE FILMS. Over a span of two days, Virgil and Bafic captured footage of Richardson’s record-breaking performance at the Olympics Trials in Eugene, Oregon. Sub Eleven Seconds will also give viewers a closer look into the trials and tribulations that impacted the young athlete’s career off the track.
The Texas native’s mighty speed captured the attention of fans back in April 2021 when she blazed through the track in 10.72 seconds, becoming the sixth-fastest woman of all time and the fourth-fastest American woman in history following her appearance in Miramar, Florida. With determination and practice, Richardson worked her way to the Olympic Trials in Oregon where she earned a spot to compete during the Tokyo Olympics after her outstanding 100m race performance. Richardson beat out her competitors in under 10.86 seconds, but the 21-year-old’s success story quickly crumbled after she tested positive for marijuana use. She was later disqualified from competing in the 2020 Olympics. In the weeks following the shocking news, Richardson told fans in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, that she smoked marijuana to cope with the loss of her mother, who passed away as she was preparing for her big moment on the world’s largest athletic stage.
“Time is my blessing and my curse,” Richardson says in the trailer for the documentary. “On the track, I’ve been blessed to run fast.” She continues, “Off the track, time has cheated me. You don’t know when something or someone will be taken from you.”
Mahfuz Sultan, who worked closely with Virgil on the documentary’s creation, thanked the inimitable design icon for his dedication to the film.
“Over a year ago, Virgil, Chloe, and I promised each other we’d start making film,” Sultan wrote on Instagram. “We miss dreaming with you V, we are so infinitely, infinitely, infinitely grateful to you.”
“Time is such a mysterious thing to me, maybe the most original human concept maybe?? (Don’t quote me on that)This film we made is a meditation on time, a portrait of Sha’carri @carririchardson_ at a specific time in her life,” he explained. “A meditation on a person who spends a lot of time trying to make the shortest amount of time,” Bafic added.
